The Soccer Machine
David Bedford
Keith Brumpton

HarperCollins 2003
65pp., pbk., $10.95
1877003263

Series: The Team

The soccer machine is a good book about a boy named Harvey who plays in a soccer team, which always loses so they all think they are rubbish.

Harvey has a next-door neighbour called Professor Gertie who is an inventor and who is trying to bring the team to soccer victory. Professor Gertie invents a machine called Mark 1 which is a metal person with pink squidgy skin and who can run at 60km/h. While Professor Gertie is working on Mark 1, she gives Harvey some other inventions to try like springing boots and a mini smoke machine in his pants to help him to score goals.

This book sucks you in right from the beginning and once you start reading it you won’ t be able to stop. It is definitely great for sneaking and reading under the covers.

In this book, as soon as you start reading it, you can feel the background and you are introduced to the atmosphere, which is kept throughout the story and you can always feel it. The characters in the story have very interesting personalities that make you think could this be real? Am I like this character?

I think the pictures in the story help you to understand the text throughout the story.

I would recommend this book for the ages 7 and up and I would rate this book a definite 9 and a half. This book doesn’t take you very long to read if you are a confident reader so it is just fun to have a read of it but then you use up about another ten minutes thinking about the story which I think compliments how the author has written it.

Anna 10 Strathfield